Susie Bright's Journal

Feelin' It

This is 10-year-old Micheal's audition at Motown.

When he sang, it was the only time he could tell the truth and survive it. His songs always seemed to be about something else.

MJ was not only denied childhood, but his gender feeling, his sexuality— everything real about him had to be refuted.

All that repression ended up hurting a lot of people. The cash registers kept ringing and a family was cannibalized by its patriarch's violence.

I hear it in his gasps and sweet notes and spiraling toes— those leaps of freedom. A gift that reached out for transcendance, left the body behind— and floated right off the pain wall.

Remembering Marilyn Chambers — 1952 - 2009

I totally fell for her.

That grin of hers... Marilyn’s instant expression of earthy satisfaction. It was like a combination of Huck Finn, The Miss America Pageant, and the first great fuck you ever had, all rolled into one. 

One weekend in the summer of 1999, long after you'd think anyone remembered, a package arrived with a hand-printed message scrawled on the envelope. My hands trembled a little. It said, "A letter from your FIRST girlfriend!"

No way. Could it be my junior high school flame? Last time I saw Miss Thing, she was on the back of a bike heading to Sturgis.

No, this package was from a different kind of girlfriend, albeit with a similar radiance— a sex symbol who was an equal trigger for my teenage nostalgia. 

Inside the envelope was a video and comeback announcement from none other than the best-selling actress in the history of porn, Marilyn Chambers. The tape was called Still Insatiable. 

Marilyn may not have been in 9th grade with me, but we were both teenagers at the same time. She became famous in 1972, when I was 14 and she was just five years older.

I wonder how many pop cult devotees have an instant mental image when Marilyn Chamber's name is mentioned. Do you flash on her swinging the trapeze in Behind the Green Door, taking all comers— or are you haunted by her voracious marathon on the pool table in the original Insatiable? Perhaps you have a David-Cronenberg corner of your heart  etched in her memory because her starring role in Rabid. 
  

For most people, even if they never saw a hardcore film in their lives, the Chambers legacy will always conjure the image of a sweet young thing with an adorable smile, cradling her baby on the Ivory Snow detergent box.

She was the girl who went from modeling for soap suds to becoming a porn star legend, cast in one of the first high-production, no-holds-barred X-rated movies. But there was something about her that was bigger, an icon of the 70s, an authentic germination.

Reading the DVD cover letter, I learned that Marilyn decided to make her comeback role by playing a right-wing politician who stumps for anti-porn legislation. She investigates the sordid depths of the sex biz and inevitably succumbs to her libido, thereby…. changing her position. It’s a porn script!

Can’t you just see her starring in the ultimate Sarah Palin rehab farce?

Marilyn certainly grew up from when she was a whippet-slim fox with a boyish figure. In her new movie, she was womanly with breasts and hips— a sweet Momma’s belly. I asked her director and old comrade-in-porn, Jane Hamilton, how fans reacted to her image who'd seen the comeback movie.

Jane said, "About half are irate because they don't ever want to see Marilyn again if she's not exactly as they remember— and the other half wouldn't care WHAT she looked like as long as they know its her— they love her, period."

"I think I'm part of that last crowd," I said. 

What gave me goose bumps in her return to the screen was the moment when her steely blue eyes turned right into the camera, and that smile of hers made everything else in the picture disappear.

When Marilyn made her first film, neither she nor anyone else had any idea she was making history. Her early producers, Jim and Art Mitchell, were bone-grateful to have a radiant young beauty who would go for it. I don't think anyone realized what her star power was all about. That captivating smile of hers personified a whole attitude about taking your pleasure and loving every minute of it.

The other key to Marilyn's appeal, the character behind that great face, is found in the title that most serious sex fans know her by: Insatiable. She could bottom on camera like few others. —So much cinematic power from an ironically-labeled “submissive” position.

Marilyn inhabited an unyielding, butch, yet feminine mojo— where you might imagine taking on the entire Nave SEALS and then taunting them for more.  She made porn clichés like “volcanic” come to life. She was Pelé-esque, but with the endgame of vulnerability and... ecstasy. Her bonhomie about what was possible— it was infectious.

She was so warm, witty, accepting of you as you were. A survivor of crazy times.

She was unique among showbiz people— and I do mean show business— it's hardly just porn— who was equipped to deal with life after one’s heyday. Very few have the security, good health, and family to translate from the A to D list, even if they have the wry humor for it, which Marilyn certainly did. She also had a strong family and great friends.

Getting old: not for the timid, certainly. But for those who spark so bright, the burn might be eviscerating. Marilyn, such an angel; what was all that shine about if not a capacity for love?

Portrait Photo: Life Magazine

Photo still: Rabid

Update: Marilyn died of undiagnosed heart disease, the number one killer of American women in her age group.

The Radiance of Bettie Page, 1923 - 2008

I was first introduced to the radiance of Bettie Page in 1983, by the editors of a gay leathermen's magazine, Drummer.

John Rowberry lent me a VHS bondage tape of Bettie modeling from the 1950's which was so cute—there's no better word to describe it— I played it continuously during Thanksgiving dinner that year. It was the beginning of a devoted affair.

(I first ran this essay in 2006. With the announcement today of Bettie's passing, I'm reprinting it, with all my appreciation.)

Miss Page came a long way in American limelight from the time her pictures were the subject of a full federal obscenity investigation, intent on saving juveniles from the depravity of smut. She became a Christian missionary and no one thought they would ever hear from her again.

But Bettie's story was different from the average Suicide Girl. She was doing fetish photography when the subject was completely removed from any sense of camp or fashion. The closet was shut so tight not even a filament of sex-positivity could be imagined. The damnation she faced must have been entirely without context to comprehend.

 It is this history that's the focus of director/writer Mary Harron's film, The Notorious Bettie Page. Mary was the director of my episode on Six Feet Under last year, and after meeting her, I marveled, "Wow, a feminist is making the Bettie Page biopic, I can't believe it."

I asked her to talk to me more about her adventures with Bettie.

SB: I was first introduced to Bettie in the milieu of gay life, the counter-culture of 1980s San Francisco and New York.

She was the post-AIDS pin-up girl, a ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak period.

At the same time, bondage and fetish were entering mainstream fashion, fueled by gay and punk culture. What do you make of such an unusual rebirth?

 
MH: It's interesting that gay men and young women have been the twin engines of the Bettie cult. I wonder if her original gay cult had something to do with the ironies inherent in her image, as well as her innate fabulousness as an image.

The Bettie bondage shots are filled with contradiction: her sunny smiles and cheesecake poses are at variance with the pictures' supposed message of dark S&M.

She was the first person to do bondage as fashion, because for her it really was all about dressing up. And there is a camp element in the Bettie catalog: the bondage shots next to homely wallpaper and living room furniture in the Klaw pictures, the leopards with leopard-skin bathing suits in the Bunny Yeager shots.

SB: Bettie was the "ne plus ultra" of photogenic. What kind of beauty does the camera love like this? What made Page's image so spectacular?

MH: She knew just how to position her face and body for the camera. More importantly, she was so relaxed.

One of the secrets of being a great photographic model, as it is for a great film actor, is that you let the camera in. It's an intimacy that the model or actor creates with the lens, that then transmits itself to the viewer.

SB: You point a finger, without drawing a thick line, at her history of sexual abuse, incest, — and also, at her survival of a gang rape when she was a teenager, long before her modeling career.

How do you think women recover, sexually, from situations like that?

MH: The abuse by her father was the most damaging, because she was still a child. She was a traumatized person, but she did have an active sex life. Billy Neal, her first husband, told me they had a great sex life and I believe him— it was clearly the motor in their relationship. 

Sexual abuse, or rape, is an awful trauma but it doesn't mean you will never enjoy sex— although it may mean you become more sexually-identified, as the careers of countless porn stars will attest.

Many men who've seen the film complain that Bettie doesn't react much to the sexual abuse: she doesn't show more rage or grief. But most men have no idea how much sexual shit women go through, how many of their female friends, relatives, and co-workers have been raped or abused in some way. They don't know about it because the women don't talk about it, and just get on with their lives, as Bettie did.

 
SB: My interpretation of Page's "naivete," and her various personalities as model, missionary, etc., is that she was coping the best way anyone does when they are suffering from mental demons.

But if she had been homely— and crazy— or even just plain, what would have happened then? Sexual allure is often both the salvation and damnation of people who need to be seen more deeply than the surface....

MH: If she had been homely, her mental problems would have been spotted earlier. The people I talked to who knew her in the Fifties all talked about how sweet, friendly, unassuming she was— but at the same time, no one seemed to know her intimately.

Even her first husband, Billy Neal, found her a mystery. That suggests to me that she had sealed herself off: there was something blank and inaccessible about her. She was always late, often hours late, which implies that she would just space out.

Someone can be mentally ill, but if they are young and beautiful and their life is going well, people don't notice because at that point the cracks are almost imperceptible. I think it's significant that Bettie's breakdowns happened in her middle age.

There were a lot of things going wrong for her by then. Her fourth marriage had collapsed, and with it her hopes of happy family life.

There were the demons from the past, her father's abuse and the gang rape. You can't discount the traumatic effects of aging. By now she was a middle-aged woman, and she had spent her whole adult life as a beauty. Her identity, her finances, her social life, her sense of herself: everything depended on that, and it was gone.

Bettie's "naivete" in the film should have quotation marks around it. It was deliberate. She had sealed herself off in some protective way from what disturbed her— not an uncommon mode among 50's women— and lived in her own bubble. She had all the evidence in front of her about what the fetish photographs were for, but she chose not to examine it.

 Thanks to Mary, Joe Westmoreland, John Rowberry, and all my collector friends, for the photos and Bettie memories.

Studs Terkel, May 16, 1912 - October 31, 2008

Studs Terkel has taken his last turn at bat.

"Take it easy, but take it..." No one ever said it better.

"Blessed Be The Nation," from Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Paul, I'm Glad You Missed the Bailout, But I Sure Miss You

“If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.”

Film clip from Cool Hand Luke, when Luke Jackson sings "Plastic Jesus" upon receiving the news of his mother's death.

Spend Your Last 9 Months Floating— Finish Off as an Orgasm!

I found out from Paul Krassner that George Carlin's daughter, Kelly, quoted my obit during her family memorial.

I'm so touched! It's just not the same without him around.

Carlin had the most perfect last words on dying:

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus?

"I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating......and you finish off as an orgasm."

On my audio show this week, I reminisce about Carlin, and then— on another subject!—  talk about the past and current state of "inter-racial" porn, which is like The Theater of the Absurd, antebellum-style:

Listen to an excerpt

Listen to the whole show

$2 a show, for a year; why not? LINK
 

To my amazement, John McCain has decided to make his entire TV campaign about stimulating the imaginary, yet titillating "horror" of Obama sullying the specter of white, and particularly, blond, womanhood. Any one of his ads that juxtapose Barack with Paris or Britney feel like they came right out of a peep show arcade. It's out of the Karl Rove playbook, to be sure. This is the guy whose entire "oeuvre" consists of perverse race and sex baiting. Focus on the other guy's cock, and your election is in the bag. I can't wait 'til he dies, and the "Rovian Porn Archives" are revealed. I'm sure his rivals the Vatican's.

Finally, in my Try This at Home" mailbag, I get a letter from a listener who asks, "Hospital Sex. Am I crazy, or does it really happen? Is it weird to be horny while recuperating from surgery?"

Darling, it's the most natural thing in the world...

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions and feedback about the show to susie@audible.com. (Episode 352, Aug. 8, 2008)

Photo Credit: Laurel & Hardy in The Battle of the Century, 1927. Over 4000 real pies were employed in the climactic battle of the custards.

Susie and Kate Bornstein Break a Few Gender Plates

 Susie Bright Interviews Transgender Outlaw Kate Bornstein

Download this free sample of In Bed with Susie Bright!

Here's the iTunes link.

When it comes to turning boys and girls upside down, and shaking up every orgasmic assumption you ever had, no one does it better than transgender author, playwright, and performance artist Kate Bornstein.

Susie and Kate discuss Bornstein's latest book, Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws, as well as gender hierarchy and depression. 

If you've ever wanted to hear the un-cutesy truth about how people stay alive when all seems lost, this is it.

If you like this sample and want to hear more, you can subscribe (for $2 a show) to my weekly show at Audible.com. I'm offering a 12-episode season on iTunes to give new listeners a taste!

Photo Credit: Poster by Kath Moonan and Alexandra Lazar  from the International Festival of Transgender Arts.

Carlin Crosses Out

 Georgie, we hardly knew ye.

Yes, you were a prophet, our long-haired bard, our poet with an out-fucking-standing command of the English language. A rare bird.

The Times is calling him "irreverent," today, in their obit headline, which is patronizing. If we're going to call him a "rev" anything, it would be a revolutionary.

Carlin, born in 1937, was prescient. What he said forty years ago about the War Machine, the crucifixion of the First Amendment, the abuses of the Church, industrial pollution, the corporate indifference to... well, everything—  his speeches could have been written yesterday.

His most radical satire, his decision to take off the suit, grow out his beard, and damn the establishment torpedoes, was his enduring contribution to American democracy.

I've been looking at a lot of my "Carlin Archives" this morning, grieving him, and thinking how influential he's been on my thinking since I first heard him, when I was in 7th grade.

I remember playing "Class Clown" for my mother— a woman whose first twenty years were entirely dominated by the Irish Catholic Church— and it was a comic exorcism for her. She peed in her pants! She was cured in one LP!

Carlin had a real gift for telling the story of his life, and in later years, I enjoyed listening to his reminiscences at the Actors' Studio.

Last year, he ripped at a gigantic Narcotics Anonymous meeting, where he described turning seventy-years-old as "69, with one finger up your ass." He eloquently described the virtues of being an "old fuck," and what it's like to go through your address book, "crossing out the dead people."

This November, he was due to accept the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for Humor, which truly puts him next to his peer— someone who could bullseye hypocrisy when he saw it, and leave us in hysterics at our own death wish.

Carlin would say, "Just because you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town."

And Twain might've replied with his own: "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."





Photo Credit: L.A. Times. Carlin was arrested on July 21, 1972, at Milwaukee's Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws, after performing "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television."

Deborah Jeane Palfrey Checks Out

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "DC Madam" whose call-girl service got busted in the cross-hairs of partisan payback, has committed suicide. She hanged herself at her mother's home in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Susie's  talk with Jeane, 2007: Link

Transcript of DJP interview: Link

 

 

Jeane, I am so sorry. I know you swore to me that you'd never serve another term in prison for prostitution, or anything else. You almost lost your eyesight the first time. I'm sure you asked your lawyers if there was any hope for your sentencing, and I guess it must have looked bleak.

I know how pissed you were. This was an act of revenge, and I know who you're determined to haunt.

You were righteously furious at all the men who "walked away." 

I'm sure that goes quite a ways back, but it certainly includes the esteemed gents on your client list: Louisiana fundamentalist, Senator David Vitter; Abstinence Ambassador Randall Tobias, who squashed AIDS funds all over the world; "Shock and Awe" war profiteer, Harlan Ullman.

And that was just the expendable layer. None of them were charged with anything; all are living quite comfortably, in particular because they have no conscience whatsoever.

Was Jeane suicidal, in the first place? Yes, but I'd describe that carefully. She wasn't irrational to think she wouldn't survive another round in a penitentiary; her health was poor. And she was brittle, the kind of person who is aware of her considerable intellect and education, but who finds herself in unlucky and vulnerable situations over and over again.

She was gullible to the wrong kinda guys, the kind of men who turned her out when she was young, whom she mistakenly placed faith in when she was looking for love, or a safe harbor. She's the kind of woman who should've been groomed for university when she was young, and cultivated for her bright mind and sensitivities. Instead, she was exploited and wasted— and her bitterness, her depression, was a result of that cruel awareness.

She tried to "go straight" after the first round in prison, and of course, was undermined by the typical prejudices against her record. She became more angry about the hypocrites, and determined to beat them at their own game. But it's clear that when Cheney bigwigs were on her tail, she wasn't going to beat their surveillance and manipulations.

Why doesn't everyone kill themselves when they're facing hard odds like Jeane did? Well, that's the million-karma question. All I can offer at this point, is painfully prescient rhetoric: Hell hath no fury like a smart woman scorned.... and justice has NOT been served.

Albert Hofmann Takes His Last Trip

With "no sense of urgency," Albert Hofmann died today at the age of 102. He invented LSD in 1938, and took the first trip— in his case on a bicycle and 250 micrograms— in 1943.

Truly a legend of "better living through chemistry," Hoffman was an imaginative and inspiring leader in the psychedelic community throughout his old age. I remember being lime-green with envy at my friends who traveled to Basel to help celebrate his 100th birthday.

Let's shout the obvious: the benefits and insights of LSD-25 have been thwarted and crucified by the Titanic stupidity of the War on Drugs™ — one of the great brainwashings of our time.

If you have ever experienced a psychedelic, either synthetic or right out of your garden, I hope you'll mention it in the coming days, to someone you love who might not be in the loop. Get out that Mom Took Acid button and stick it on your fridge. Smell the Marigolds. Raise a glass to Albert!

The Yippies, circa 1968, were notorious for suggesting that we put "acid in the water supply" to speed an end to the Vietnam war. Below, proof they were right...

Tommy, We Hardly Knew Ye

This spring marks our first St. Patrick's Day without singer and storyteller Tommy Makem... since his birth in 1932. He died last August— and I bet a lot of people are toasting Tommy with more than a few tears this weekend.

Tommy Makem, and the Clancy Brothers, sang the songs I was put to bed with, as a child, my lullabies. Not all of them are sweet, or sad like this one— Tommy is just as famous for his dancing tunes. I remember my mother grabbing me up into the air and starting an Irish jig at the first chord of Finnegan's Wake, or O'Reilly's Daughter.

These Irish folk songs are the first lyrics I learned by heart, the kind of tunes a toddler warbles without having any idea what the words mean!

Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All Dressed in Black, Black, Black
With Silver Buttons, Buttons, Buttons
Going Down Her Back, Back, Back

Now way down Yonder, Yonder, Yonder,
In the Jailbird Town Town Town
Where the Women All Work Work Work
When The Sun Goes Down Down Down

You know, it wasn't until I was 32 years old, and singing my infant to sleep, that I realized that song is the story of a singular streetwalker!

I was watching the Pete Seeger documentary the other night— The Power of Song— and contemplated his remarks on the fate of music's communal memory:

In 1943, when he was in the Army, Mr. Seeger conducted an experiment on his fellow soldiers, asking them to write down the names of the songs whose words and tunes they really knew. In his own memory file he counted about 300, but he was impressed by the competition.

“I was surprised how many the average person knew back then,” he said. He supposed that the number of songs crossing lines of generation, class and sex would be much lower today, outside of “Over the Rainbow” and “Happy Birthday to You.”

Ouch. That's sad but true. I think how many songs I know by heart, and they pale in comparison to my parent's musical memory. My mom not only sang all the songs, she knew all the dances that went with them.

Sometimes I get in a panic, when I realize that the days when I sang my daughter every night are long behind us. At a certain point, she became embarrassed by my singing— Mom! Stop it!—  and since the rest of the neighborhood wasn't crooning their own tunes, voices floating out the windows, kids singing harmony in the streets, there's been no peer support for it.

You have to go out of your way to find a singing group now— in my childhood, I can't recall going over to someone's house where people didn't dance and sing as a matter of course.

The other night I went to a dinner party followed by the roll-out of a home karaoke machine. I noticed that anyone who knew the song, would rather turn around to the crowd, and belt it out, without the lyric prompt. The microphone's the fun part, not following the bouncing ball. My friends were shocked that I knew so many  old country tunes, like "Your Cheatin' Heart," or "Jackson."

I don't know how I know these songs; I can't remember a time when I didn't know them. I realize they go so far back in my mind, because I learned them from my family's singing, not from a recording. I didn't know who "Patsy" or "The Carter Family" was. It was only when I when I got older, and bought my own 45's and records, that I learned lyrics from the original recording artist.

This song, The Butcher Boy, is the lament of a young girl who's found herself knocked up by the butcher's helper, who's abandoned her. She contemplates her and her baby's fate, and  hangs herself, with her last poem tucked in her pocket.

Tommy is singing it on Pete Seeger's wonderful old TV program, Rainbow Quest.

The tragic splendor, if not the narrative, of the tale, is an inspiration to Patrick McCabe's novel, The Butcher Boy, and Neil Jordan's movie of the same name. In the case of the McCabe's tale, it's as if the young girl had birthed her child after all, and named him "Francie Brady." His story makes his mother's look like a walk in the park— one of the most damning stories about religion, poverty, violence— and Ireland— I've ever read.

But back to Tommy. What a passion for life. His poems will be sung for very long time. I hope you don't mind if I change the lyrics to another one of his favorites, this time, a Scottish one:

Now Tommy is a bonny lad, he is a lad of mine,
I've never had a better lad and I've had twenty-nine...

And for you, and for you, and for you, my Tommy lad,
I'd dance the buckles off my shoes wi' you my Tommy lad!

Bob Nash's Last Ride

One of my favorite people, Bob Nash, died February 10th— and I was unexpectedly with him in the near hours, to be an impromptu pallbearer. Our photos above tell you the story of "Bob's Last Ride."

Nash was a little different from most of of my friends. He was a legend— of a rather magical place. Bob was the last connection to the Beat Generation that flourished in Big Sur and the Carmel Valley after WWII. He rode a bicycle to Partington Ridge in 1952... from Lafayette! He made over 20,000 drawings and paintings, a lifelong artist. Yes, he partied with Henry Miller. He took care of Edward Weston. He was best friends with diplomat Nicholas Roosevelt. He built a cabin on property he didn’t own, and became grandfathered into the parcel. He died one week shy of 90.

Bob also loved the radio, and all things audio. His vision started going about ten years ago. He was passionate about storytelling, science, astrophysics, politics, and sex. The first time I asked him what he liked about my audio programs, he looked at me very carefully, and then said, “I like the way you say 'fuck.'”

How did he survive out in the middle of nowhere? —With tremendous skill and labor, but also a lot of mediation and a peerless application of “doing nothing.” One day, a man came to Big Sur who’d just decided to change his life, and drop out of the rat race. He asked Bob what he thought he should do first. Bob said, "for the first year, look at the clouds." And he wasn’t kidding!

You hear that phrase, "he died as he lived" — so true in Bob’s case. He had no pain. He let go in the night. He was home with friends visiting him 'round the clock. His kitty Teddy was with him. His body was carried by his friends. He had his wits with him till the very end.

When Linda, his main gal-caretaker, was visiting him the night before, she'd fixed up his bed and read him a story. When she asked if he needed anything else for the night, he said, “How about two more blondes?” 

When his friend Steve came to see him, who made his web site, Bob requested that he go into the house and get “ a big blue book” near the cat bowl... It was Quantum Mechanics, a textbook. Steve, no slouch, struggled to read it, but Bob helped him through.

I went to see Bob two Sundays ago, thinking I’d catch him one last time. I wanted to talk to him about the Election Primary results! On the way there, Bob's Big Sur family, Toby and Linda, called to say he passed.

But it turned out to be so right that we came that day. I don't know how we would've  moved Bob without all our strong arms!

I wasn’t with my parents bodies when they died. Everything was quickly tucked away, the American Death industry at work.

I asked if I could go to Bob’s cabin by myself for a couple minutes, before we carried him out, so I could see how I’d handle it. I felt like a scared kid wandering in, but then I just started talking to him, and that relaxed me. I finally got the nerve to put my hand on his.

When one dies, all your wrinkles seem to disappear, and your skin is so soft... that’s why everyone looks so beatific. I loved Bob's peaceful countenance, but I was sad too, because he was a small figure now, and he once was so big. This guy built everything, was a first-class seducer, and carried every child on his shoulders.

We rolled him up in his bed linens, and picked him up, and walked up the hill. I now know the meaning of "dead weight," Bob! So much for being small! I'll miss you dearly, and the Ridge will never be the same.

Henry Miller famously wrote of our friend, in 1959:

For Bob Nash
my neighbor,
friend, critic, collaborator,

homme mysterieux,
né à Wyoming
éduqué par la guerre,
trés sensible
un peu fanatique,
toujours ouvert,
cherchant de secret de son être,
timide, plein de confiance,
---- un enigme, quoi!

.......a man of mystery
born of Wyoming
educated in the war
very sensitive
a little fanatic, always open
searching for the secret of his own being,
timid, full of confidence --
an enigma, what!

I dedicate my audio show this week to, Bob Nash. His Big Sur friends describe their memorial here, and you'll see a bit of Bob on video, too. Our local Central Coast radio station, KUSP, is also dedicating their newly repaired Big Sur radio tower to him, too, which mysteriously went went silent the same day Bob expired! There was no more devoted listener than Our Mr. Engima.

The rest of my show is just the sort of thing Bob would get a kick out of— I say "fuck" better than ever! First there's my dissertation on the American phenomenon of the "Purity Ball". It's like a reverse-coming-out-party. 

In my mailbag this week, I read from an article about how to enliven long-married couples, and discuss why people want to scream every time they're asked to perform "date night" rituals.

Benazir Bhutto and the Golden Splinters

I woke up with a rotten cough this morning, and filled with self-pity and ginger tea, turned to the front page of the Times. I saw the headline, and the tea came right back up my throat.

Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan prime minister and opposition leader, has been assassinated at her most recent public speaking event— the result of a shooting followed by a suicide-bomber who killed scores of others.

The news shocked me, yet I wasn't sure why— since the moment Benazir returned to Pakistan, I couldn't imagine how she would escape repeated murder attempts.

Now that it's finally happened, no one will escape her death's repercussions.

I often daydreamed about private conversations Bhutto must've had with her loved ones, particularly her two daughters, to discuss her destiny. Did she feel like she had any choice in the matter? I wondered if she had the hubris to imagine she'd survive and triumph in Pakistan's future, or whether she believed that her greatest legacy would be confrontation till the death, like her heroine, Joan d'Arc.

As I consider these alternatives, (and hear of her last "merci-et-adieu" Blackberry messages to childhood friends like Peter Galbraith), it seems obvious to me that her expectations were the latter. Her father, two brothers, and a sister, were all murdered— she was the last.

She was a real fighter— how often do we see a woman on the world stage like this anymore? She was driven to atone for her complicity in Pakistan's (and A.Q. Khan's) nuclear technology free-for-all, in which everyone with a gripe and pile of cash could make an entertainable offer. Each time Bhutto wrote or spoke of keeping the her country's "Dr. Strangegloves" in check during her regime, her tone was wreaked with guilt.

A lot of people will talk about Bhutto's past of corrupt deeds... but she is hardly distinguished in that area. Her wild streak was her urge toward democracy, peace, secularization, and literacy— that's what made her threatening, not her share of the graft.

The Times reporters' biography of Benazir, such as it is, angers me, because of its characterization of her career.

The writers described Bhutto as performing a "dance of veils" over the course of her political battles. Unbelievable! Someone needs to stuff their Arabian Nights fantasies back in the bottle. Whatever criticism is leveled at the central figures in this drama— and there's plenty to ladle out—  I'd like to see the press avoid the most rank sexist clichés. Otherwise, I demand to hear of George Bush's "Dance of the Seven Neckties."

The military leaders of Pakistan— I don't have their names at my fingertips because that's the way they like it—  control their country, and ha-ha-President Musharraf is their pull toy. So is the White House, for that matter. Who will quack?— And who will die next?

President calls Pakistan "Our Great Ally in the WOT." Anyone on the street can tell you  Pakistan's "deciders" are the progenitors of the most dangerous fundamentalist violence and aggression in the world today. Heckuva job, ya gotta say— and a helluva lot blood on the  hands of "Mr. Mission Accomplished."

The fundie-armed patriarchs at every side are the geniuses of the it's-just-too-dangerous-type atmosphere which makes for perfect excuses of why there can never be an election, (too risky!) never be democracy, (terrifying!) or ever realize human dignity (the ultimate shock). Danger trumps  all, doesn't it— that's why totalitarianism feels so safe and cozy.

You think about America's response to our own assassination history, and you realize there is nothing worse for a country's store of hope.  Along with this year's mouth-dropping coronation at Time magazine's for Vladimir Putin as "Man of the Year!" we have entered the era of gilded gangsterism as national governance— let the mob, in all their anonymity, run your country for you.

Maybe, at the thugs' leisure, they'll let you live. Kill the press, don't let any light shine anywhere, let no deal proceed forward without a back-room press. As far as women go... they can be whores or heir-making hens for their masters.

I am in awe of Bhutto's image because she represented neither feminine caricature— she defied the pink ghetto. Not to pick on the Times alone, but check out which other women are spotlighted in today's issue: Notably, Ivanka Trump, a sex symbol who takes off her clothes to promote daddy's real estate empire. The only other female in the entire news world who's making serious headlines today is a Siberian tiger named Tatiana at the San Francisco Zoo, who was taunted out of her cage and killed everyone she could get her claws on before she was gunned down.

I'm always moved by martyrs— and I know the women in their ranks have a capacity for fire and sacrifice that pales their male counterparts. But I'd rather they lived— every one of them. I don't need another martyr, or further fuel to contemplate the thug life that surrounds their demise. I'd rather address nuclear escalation directly. Or the bitter fruit of colonial kingmaking. I'd rather call religious sectarianism out on the carpet. There is no safety without democracy, there's no diaper pin that's going to stop the grenade if we just shut up and do as we're told. I'd rather repudiate infantilism, and tell Big Daddy we're through.

UPDATE: This afternoon, in their continual updates, the Times edited their original bio of Bhutto, and deleted the "dance of veils" reference. It was so offensive, I'm sure many readers remarked upon it. See below in comments for more...

Photo: Bhutto, coming home to Pakistan after her recent years in exile.

The Spanish March on Mexico City, 1519

Auh in ommicohuac Chollollan, niman hualpeuhque in ye ic huitze Mexico.
After the massacre in Cholula, then they set forth for Mexico.

Ololiuhtihuitze, tepeuhtihuitze, teuhtli quiquetztihuitze.
They came grouped together, they came in a mass, they came raising dust.

In intepoztopil, in intzinacantopil iuhquin  tlapepetlaca.  
Their iron lances, their halberds seemed to glitter.

Auh in intepozmacuauh iuhquin atl monecuiloa.
Their iron swords gleamed like flowing water.

Iuh tlacacalaca in intepozhuipil, in inteposcuacalala.
They seemed to clatter, their iron shirts, their iron helmets.

Auh in cequintin huel moch tepoztli motquitihitze, tetepoztin mochiuhtihuitze, pepetlacatihuitze.
And some came all encased in iron, they came transformed in iron, they came glittering.

Ic cenca hualmomahuizzotitiaque, ic cenca hualmotlamauhtilitiaque.
Thus they came causing great awe, thus they came causing great terror.

Ic cenca mauhcaittoya, ic cenca imacaxoya.
Thus they were seen with great fear, thus they were held in great dread.

Auh in imitzcuilhuan yacattihuitze, quinyacantihuitze.
And their dogs came in front, they came in the lead.

Iyacac icatihuitze, inyacac onotihuitze.
They came standing out before them, they came spread out before them.

Ihicicatihuitze, intencualac pipilcatihuitz.
They came constantly panting, their slaver constantly dripping.

Today is the first anniversary of my father, Bill Bright's death. He wrote this "translation poem" from the eyewitness account in the Florentine Codex 12:xi, as told from Fray Bernadindo de Sagagún, the first ethnographer of the New World. Bill studied Nahuatl and Aztec culture in Mexico since he first visited Mexico in 1947, until the end of his life.

The Lenny Bruce of Therapy

Betty Dodson wrote this letter to me today—  grieving Albert Ellis, the revolutionary psychotherapist, who died last week at 93.

We have lost a great man.

David Hersh sent the Times article to me below. I want to share it with all of the sex educators and therapists on my list.

If we could all "Get Over Ourselves," it would be a far more glorious world...

During my difficult years of being scorned or laughed at for promoting masturbation, Albert was always a supporter of mine.He was the only sex therapist who gave my book, Sex for One, a positive statement back in '86. He said, 'Sex for One" proves once again that Betty  is a pioneering and outstanding authority on masturbation. Read this remarkably honest and liberating book.'

I thanked Albert at the time, and I thank him again. I'll miss his brazen honesty.

Here's an excerpt from the "Sex, Love and the Scolding Psychotherapist," the NYT story by Mary Jo Murphy that Betty sent me:

ALBERT ELLIS, sometimes called the Lenny Bruce of psychotherapy, had a different use for the phallus from Freud’s: action, not analysis. Or, action! he might say, adding his favored punctuation mark and maybe italics, too, lest the emphasis remain undetected. Freud’s methods were simply too glacial for him.

Dr. Ellis, who died last week at 93, laid out his prescriptive calls to action in more than 75 books. Mostly the books deal with his pioneering and extremely popular and influential rational emotive behavior therapy, and how it can rid you of your neuroses (stop moping), but among them are a handful of sex manuals. Here’s a sampling from the Ellis oeuvre.

From How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything: Yes, Anything!:

Not all emotional disturbance stems from arrogant thinking. But most of it does. And when you demand that you must not have failings, you can also demand that you must not be neurotic. ...

Will insight into your emotional problems help you overcome them? ... Conventional insight will help you very little. For it says that your knowledge of exactly how you got disturbed will make you less neurotic. Drivel! It will often help make you become nuttier!

From How to Keep People From Pushing Your Buttons:

The second type of screwball thinking is called absolutist thinking, another 10-dollar term. ... Some of us walk around all day long getting on our own cases: “I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that. I should have said this to that person. I need to be more that. I ought to be more organized. I should be more attractive, intelligent, witty, popular and personable. I ought to be more assertive. I need to be less aggressive. I’ve got to speak up more. I really need to keep my mouth shut.” ... Some of us “should on ourselves” all day long!

From Is Objectivism a Religion?— in which he takes on Ayn Rand:

Objectivisim ceaselessly talks about the necessity of our accepting the facts of reality — that because A is A and existence exists, we’d better face these facts and live according to empirically observable happenings. In regard to life in general ... and to capitalism in particular, objectivism is just about as unrealistic and antiempirical as it can be. It remains in a world of “rational” fictions and it invents innumerable fantasies about capitalism and refuses to admit its fantasizing.

From The Art and Science of Love:

Where one mate has strong prejudices in favor or against certain sex practices, the other partner should try to be unusually understanding and uncritical, even if the practices that are favored or disfavored seem to be outlandish. If the presumably more reasonable mate will at least give the “outlandish” procedures an honest try, he or she may find that they are really not as bad as they seem to be.

Dr. Ellis aimed darts at Freud in much of his work. From Anger: How to Live With and Without It:

Changing your life involves your willingness to separate yourself from the childish concept that your parents still can make you act and think today. It also involves your attending to your present and future situations, not to your infantile ones.

My Friend Jim Mitchell Has Died

I don't know what to say right now. I can't believe it, and I feel like I'm re-living the day all over again when I first got the news about Art. I thought I was hearing it upside-down.

They loved each other so much. I know that sounds crazy if all you've read were the tabloid headlines, but that's the thing you've got to know to understand anything at all. They were Irish twins. 

Jim and Art made a huge difference in my life; I'm hardly alone. They gleefully supported On Our Backs when no one else in the sex trade would even speak to us. They may not have been "gay," but they sure weren't straight. They were the anti-squares, totally defiant, and absolutely inspirational when it came to creative subversion. Doing any kind of anarchy or politics with them was a delight from start to finish. Where art thou, War News? Now I want to call Hunter, and he's gone too.

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Losing Both Parents

Before both my parents died, I considered their dying one at a time— what would it be like to never see my mom again, or if Bill wasn't just a phone call away.

What hadn't occurred to me was to be "parentless"— for them both to be gone, and to have a profound "orphan" feeling, even though I'm way too old to be traditionally orphaned.

It also made me realize, in retrospect, how both my mother and father made dramatic changes in the lives when their "last" parent died— my mother "shipped me off," never to return, and my dad made significant decisions both in his profession and love life. They both had parents who died decades apart from one another, and I'd never thought of the cumulative effect.

I was fortunate to receive a book in the wake of my parents' deaths— it was about a year and a half apart— that  mesmerized me on this subject.

It's called Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, edited by Alison Gilbert.

It's a series of interviews with people who you've never considered in this light: Barbara Ehrenreich, Geraldine Ferraro, Dennis Franz, Yogi Berra, Ice-T, among many others.

The "celebrity" stories are in a different voice than any of the tabloid muck we read— they're intimate and entirely real. There's also people's stories you're almost too afraid to open, like the teenager who lost her mother to cancer one week, and then the next, on 9/11, her policeman father died at the Twin Towers.

I asked Allison if I could share two stories with you, Ferraro's and Ice-T's.

Ice-T... who knew that his VERY NAME is based on that fact that he lost both his parents at a very young age?

I’ve always felt like an outsider. Every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, it was me, sitting at someone else’s table. It was that vibe like when you’re over at somebody’s house and they’re whispering in the kitchen, “Why is he here?”

I came into life so hard that when I see other adults who say they need or want their parents, it seems corny to me. When there’s nobody to hug you when you cry, eventually you stop crying. I think that’s how I ended up getting called “Ice.”

Continued...

 

Gerry Ferraro... I hadn't thought of her since her heroic, but ill-fated nomination for vice-president. She is an amazing storyteller, and her history tells you more about the roots of the Democratic Party, as well as her poignant relationship with her parents, that anything I've read in years.

One morning, when I was eight years old, I woke up and went into my parents’ bedroom, and was surprised to find my father still in bed. He looked at me, and my mother said, “Gerry, leave the room.”

When my mother came out of the bedroom, she told me, “Daddy’s gone to heaven.” He had died of a heart attack. 
   
I never went back in that room. 

Continued...

 

I told Allison I wish I could buy a truckload of her books and hand one to every single person I know who loses a parent, regardless of whether they had a loving or hateful relationship, close or distant. It's a certainty that whatever you envision about the aftermath of your parents death, you are guaranteed a significant surprise. This book gives you an inkling and a solace for what those revelations really mean. I can't recommend it enough.

What Kind of Fool Do You Take Me For?

Despite my attempts at life's little enchantments, this week carried a deep, dirty, rotten disgrace in its wake.

I refer, of course, to the decision of the Democratic Party majority in Congress to give George Bush a hall pass and a pot of gold to sally forth into Stage Freakazoid of His Holy Crusade. "Y'all be careful now, W.!"

The "conditions" the Party laid down are as tough as mom's dentures. I'm sure the Iraqis'll respond to U.S. ultimatums like children at The Great Father's Knee. That's what the little brown people always do when we get upset, isn't it? Colonialism With Conditions!

I expect, expected— fucking-always-expect— nothing from the Democratic leadership. Can you sing, LBJ, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

But the past few months, the Dems have been outraged about Iraq. They've been determined in their election promises, devoted to pointing out the criminally negligent, self-mutilating vainglory of it all.

I thought, "Huh! They're going to follow their constituents' wishes on this. They published the best arguments of anyone! They're going to bring the reality check to the table and stand there to see it gets paid in full. Yee-Ha!"

We got the Happy Meal coupon instead.

What does it mean when the Speaker of the House says the compromise she just struck is something she herself wouldn't vote for? That's pathetic.

It says that at today's 23% approval rating for Bush's war plan— and counting down—  the Bush Admin is still outmaneuvering the Democratic leadership. Who are the Dems playing to? Why should we bother to vote for a "President" in '08 at all?

What's left of the GOP is betting on the fantasy that they'll be better unified on horseshit than the Dems are drawn asunder on the same pile of dung. Both sides, in fact, are responding to corporate profits and lobbying strategies that have nothing to do with the public interest.

And, yeah, we know that, now.

So many people seem to get it, and are even mesmerized by the circle around the drain. But being led around by the nose is still very much in vogue. Voters have been played like marionettes on kneeslappers like "special gay rights!" and "immigration walls!"

Both houses, the Capulets and the Montagues, have given The War another pat on the back and a raise because they are beholden to, and blinded by, a different constituency than the one that voted them into office.

Who am I talking about? Quo Bene?

That's what I'd love to see spelled out in the daily papers of record. Talk about missing a set of teeth. They squander their space with dribble about how the Democrats are afraid of what they would "look like" if they aren't supportive of the troops getting their C-rations.

Look like? Are you kidding me? Who besides the gilded 1% is looking for anything, except an end to this immoral imperial charade? When are the Billion Dollar Dogs of Profiteering going to be put down?

One day Enron will be seen as a minor blip, a geologic footnote, in the glacier of greed that comprises the ruling class of this country. They will grind this world flat.

The people I see who are following the money are waaay on the outside— filmmakers like Robert Greenwald with Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers— that's mandatory viewing. You can start your "who benefits?" list right there.

Then there's Amy Goodman's crew on Democracy Now: Ya gotta love Kenneth STARR, of all people, defending Blackwater's war contracts.

The war profiteers cannot be altruistic or public-spirited. They can't be fulfilled. It's like asking a scorpion to give you a free ride. They can't be talked into a wind-down, a slowdown, or letting up on the gas. Their existence as a permanent arms economy can only survive by expansion.

Until we take away their toys, they will break them; they will break us. We have to stop paying for them, voting for them, working for them. It's a vision thing, as King George might say— to stop seeing that we share the slightest, tiniest, mutual interest.

Bush and his posse were voted in by ungilded people who thought he represented their economic trust. What does it mean for them to regret that mistake? What will we do now, when it's all too apparent we're bleeding out?

Several weeks ago, Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who served in Vietnam, wrote an editorial in the Boston Globe:

"Today, Iraq teeters on the brink of disintegration. The war's costs, already staggering, continue to mount. Violence triggered by the US invasion has killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. We cannot fully absolve ourselves of responsibility for those deaths."

This past Mother's Day, he lost his own son, by suicide bomber in Iraq. In despair, he cried:

"What kind of democracy is this? When the people do speak, and the people's voice is unambiguous – but nothing happens?"

Then the words that must have been the hardest...

"I've been  struggling...to try to understand my responsibility for my own son's death."

It's a question any American could ask, because we're losing our sons and daughters in every quarter. Our Constitution— an infant, really— is gasping for breath.

What kind of a democracy is this?  It's a cradle that begs to be set right.

Jerry Falwell Takes a Flight Down

“I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved.”

"Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them."

“Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.”

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals— it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

"I believe that global warming is a myth. And so, therefore, I have no conscience problems at all and I'm going to buy a Suburban next time."

"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals— most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home."

"I do not believe we can blame genetics for adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty and other character flaws."

"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. When we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad... I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way— all of them who have tried to secularize America— I point the finger in their face, and say, 'You helped this happen.'"
— On Why 9-11 Happened

"Hell's a real place— where real people spend a real eternity."

The Man, The Waterslide, The Damage Done: Link

 

What If You Knew Her and Found Her Dead on the Ground

"Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!" Then 13 seconds of gunfire. That part is unmistakeable.

A Kent State student in the dorm window above the "killing field," recorded the whole thing on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, just released this past week.

67 shots fired, 29 shooters, 13 students down, 4 dead— including 2 students who were among the few walking to class rather than demonstrating against the war— 1 of whom was ROTC. Of those killed, the nearest was 265 feet away.

Of course it's impossible to commemorate what happened thirty-six years ago without taking about what happened thirty-six HOURS ago in Los Angeles.

I was twelve on May 4, 1970. I was solemn in front of our black & white Zenith, not listening to David Brinkley, watching the footage and counseling myself, "They're going to kill all of us." In my puberty-struck mind, I was comforted that at least all the other things I feared about growing up would never come to pass— 'cause I'd be dead.

I remember the conversations of the heads above me, "That's it— Nixon's murdering the children now" — while others argued, "They've been killing "the children" in Vietnam and down South for years."

Yes, Kent State shocked Middle America because the victims were the fair-haired sons and daughters of what looked to be a bucolic midwestern campus community. It was Ozzie and Harriet gunning down Little Ricky and Wally.

Bush was sneakier, a whole new level of chill. The Torture Memos must be denied. There is no anniversary of anything.

In Ira Glass's brilliant radio program, "Habeus Schmabeus," on American Life, he  revealed the real people who've "disappeared" into Gitmo. The mysterious detainees? No more. Their stories blow away even the most jaded. Listen to the episode here, or read the transcript—  I recommend hearing their voices.

Bush's inner circle included the foundation of the Nixon administration, and all their bitterness over Watergate's shame. It remains unsoothed— their anger that Hanoi wasn't bombed hard enough, that their children are "thoughtless little pigs," that journalists need their tits caught in a wringer, that brown and black people around the world should shut up and turn over their land, their oil, their whatever.

"Students/Communists/Terrorists"—  as Farmer Yassir opined on National Lampoon's  Lemmings, "What's the difference once the head's chopped off?" 

They've taken isolating people who "don't count" to an infinity of barbarism.

May 4 is remembered notoriously by Neil Young's song Ohio. But I have a preference for the prescience of Frank Zappa's little ditty, penned in 1966:

Mr. America, walk on by— your schools that do not teach
Mr. America, walk on by— the minds that won't be reached
Mr. America try to hide— the emptiness that's you inside
But once you find that the way you lied
And all the corny tricks you tried
Will not forestall the rising tide of hungry freaks, Daddy!

They won't go on four no more
Great mid-western hardware store
Philosophy that turns away
From those who aren't afraid to say— what's on their minds
The left-behinds of the Great Society

Hungry freaks, Daddy!

Mr. America, walk on by— your supermarket dream
Mr. America, walk on by— the liquor store supreme
Mr. America try to hide— the product of your savage pride
The useful minds that it denied
The day you shrugged and stepped aside
You saw their clothes, and then you cried,
Those hungry freaks, Daddy!

 

Photo of Alan Canfora, with his flag, just before the shooting started. He survived.